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Author Topic:   Someone who admits he knows nothing about geology, asking where the colum came from?
funkmasterfreaky
Inactive Member


Message 46 of 64 (25200)
12-02-2002 12:40 AM
Reply to: Message 45 by Coragyps
12-01-2002 10:56 PM


Okay then now i get curious how we know the speed of light? How was this arrived at? Does it's speed decay, or maintain at the same rate forever? If it doesn't decay then why not?
I still have really yet to learn to much other than re inforcing some basics. However this idea in my head has formed (please note i said idea, instead of theory, or even hypothesis)concerning the biblical account of the history of the earth. Now I also know that the bible is pretty much considered fasified and generally thought of as having no place in science. However i cannot help entertain the idea that this earth may have experienced some very quick drastic changes. Two of which would be the flood, the obvious first and secondly the tower of Babel. (again note this is pure speculation based on an idiots understanding of the earth). But while the flood would have caused great damage to the earth ,it speaks of the waters of the deep coming up. Now I draw in my mind a giant jacuzzi tub where the earth is ripped up and huge jets of water tear things up not to mention the power of this water once it is storming upon the earth. (note i know there are a great many complications with this and that i'm assuming alot ).
Well we know that once something like that happens in the earth the energy doesn't just quit there that activity continues in volcanoes and earth quakes. Now this waters of the deep had to come from somewhere. (again i'm speculating i don't know where they were) So i'm expecting that they tore up from somewhere spewed on the earth and then receded.
When the tower of babel happens I'm wondering if that's where the plates which had become broken and weakened by the flood really seperated. It says that the people were scattered across the globe and their language confused. Is there any evidence to support the idea that there was some sort of enormous earthquake "earth shattering" quake lol. Now this would cause all sorts of things i'm not even going to start. How ridiculous is this? I'm sure someone will let me know. This is catastrophic extreme dreaming and speculating. Don't take it as anything more than it is, a wild guess . thanx guys.
------------------
saved by grace

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 Message 45 by Coragyps, posted 12-01-2002 10:56 PM Coragyps has replied

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wj
Inactive Member


Message 47 of 64 (25205)
12-02-2002 1:16 AM
Reply to: Message 44 by funkmasterfreaky
12-01-2002 9:51 PM


quote:
Now I do not know hardly anything of dating methods, though i have been reading up on these things slowly. Lacking the knowledge right now i cannot rightly dispute these dating methods. However the assumption that the "ruler" we are using is constant seems shaky to me.
So, your ignorance of a matter qualifies you to make an assessment of the validity of the assumptions made in radiometric dating? So your opinion should be more highly valued than those of scientists who have tested the assumptions? Your view should prevail against those of scientists who have tested radiometric dating against historical volcanic eruptions to assess the validity of the techniques?
You could educate yourself by reading through articles such as Radiometric Dating Does Work and Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective
And, as been pointed out elsewhere, data from supernova spectra show the same rates of radioactive decay as we observe on earth today. Of course, all this would have to be wrong for you to belive in your particular interpretation of a a religious scripture.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 44 by funkmasterfreaky, posted 12-01-2002 9:51 PM funkmasterfreaky has replied

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funkmasterfreaky
Inactive Member


Message 48 of 64 (25209)
12-02-2002 2:02 AM
Reply to: Message 47 by wj
12-02-2002 1:16 AM


I wasn't refuting radiometric dating i was asking questions about it. I am asking questions to learn because i don't know. If you feel you don't have time to bother with my musing and questions ignore me. Sorry to waste your precious time.
------------------
saved by grace

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Karl
Inactive Member


Message 49 of 64 (25213)
12-02-2002 3:37 AM


The speed of light was originally measured by seeing how long it took to get to a mirror and back again. I don't know how it's done now.
Why should the speed of light decay? Why should any constant change? It's sensible enough to assume it doesn't and look for evidence it does. There is no such evidence, despite some very dodgy graph extrapolation that the creationists used to be keen on. I wonder if that one is still doing the rounds amongst the creationists themselves? Tends to happen - discredited arguments still circulate where itching ears are eager to hear them.

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Quetzal
Member (Idle past 5871 days)
Posts: 3228
Joined: 01-09-2002


Message 50 of 64 (25225)
12-02-2002 7:03 AM
Reply to: Message 44 by funkmasterfreaky
12-01-2002 9:51 PM


Hi funk,
This is actually a pretty fair question. Catastrophes DO occur. Do a search for the Siberian Traps or the Alvarez event. The point is that when really big disasters happen, there is evidence in the rocks. Geology doesn't lie. If there was a huge, global catastrophe like the postulated biblical flood, there would be unequivocal evidence found all over the world that a geologist would recognize almost instantly. For every major disaster on record down through history, there is a smoking gun. Even little ones (like a meteor impact or a single volcanic cataclism like the explosion of Mombacho Volcano 10,000 ya in Nicaragua) will show local evidence. In more than two hundred years, no one has found the Flood's smoking gun.

This message is a reply to:
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Coragyps
Member (Idle past 734 days)
Posts: 5553
From: Snyder, Texas, USA
Joined: 11-12-2002


Message 51 of 64 (25239)
12-02-2002 9:28 AM
Reply to: Message 46 by funkmasterfreaky
12-02-2002 12:40 AM


[QUOTE]Originally posted by funkmasterfreaky:
[B] Okay then now i get curious how we know the speed of light? How was this arrived at? Does it's speed decay, or maintain at the same rate forever?[/QUOTE]
The decay rate of nuclei like nickel-56 can be calculated, sort of, by equations that depend on the speed of light as one of their constants. If the speed of light had changed, the decay rate and energy of decay would have changed too, and observation shows that they haven't.

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Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 52 of 64 (25303)
12-02-2002 6:10 PM
Reply to: Message 49 by Karl
12-02-2002 3:37 AM


I just thought I'd bring you guys up to date on c decay issues. Mainstream science recently (2001) discovered that the fine-structure constsant alpha = e^2/h/c has changed by 1 part in 100,000 in the last hundreds of millions of years via measuremetn of spectra from distant galaxies. Earlier this year an argeumetn was made (in Nature)by a well known atheist physicist that it was probably c that changed.
Alternatively light could be decaying by much more and e is also changing. This may or may not have creationist repercutions. The creationist cosmology of Humphreys does not need c decay but whatever the case we now live in a universe in which these 'constants' are evolving. Accelerated radiodecay, a ssuporrted by recent geochemical measuremetns, is possibly linked to c-decay.

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gene90
Member (Idle past 3822 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 53 of 64 (25358)
12-03-2002 5:00 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Tranquility Base
12-02-2002 6:10 PM


Does that not violate the 1LOT and the Laws of Conservation? Behold E=mc^2, change c and you change the energy content of matter. How is it possible?

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Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 54 of 64 (25364)
12-03-2002 5:50 PM
Reply to: Message 53 by gene90
12-03-2002 5:00 PM


That's what's got everyone so fascinated.
But let's remember where these laws come from: lots of empirical measurment today. c, or at least alpha, is evoloving very slowly or is constant now so our 'laws' reflect that. There are mathematical frameworks where these things can change and no doubt there are some fascinating new PhD projects going on in theoretical physics groups world wide.
The Th-physics group I did my PhD in had a student working on the properties of tachyons (> c particles) should they exist. Although a fringe area he got one of the best groundings in physics out of all of us. One month he would rewrite electodynamics and the next month general relativity. He became a true all rounder. I have no idea what he went on to do.

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frank
Inactive Member


Message 55 of 64 (25369)
12-03-2002 6:09 PM
Reply to: Message 52 by Tranquility Base
12-02-2002 6:10 PM


Hi TB,
Concerning the decay in c, I thought you may be interested in an interview with John Webb appearing in Astronomy Now magazine, October 2002, page 31. Some parts of the interview for your consideration:
"I don't know for sure if anything is changing with time, but the observational results we've got are both statistically significant and consistant with a change to the fine structure constant. However, it is still possible that there is some kind of systematic problem with the data that we haven't yet spotted."
"There are several reasons to suspect that the speed of light might be the culprit, but I have to say at the moment it is just theoretical speculation."
"If you interpret the varying fine structure constant in terms of a varying speed of light and a constant electron charge and Planck constant, then yes the speed of light is falling as the Universe grows older. Whether it continues to drop at the same rate today as it did in the past is not clear. Looking at the data, my suspicion would be that the rate of change was more rapid in the past. But the data are not really good enough to tie that down. That is for us to do in the future."
"So far, all the quasar data have come from the same instrument, mounted on the same telescope. Obviously we have to be quite careful as to whether there could be a particular problem with the data, which is particular to that instrument, or that telescope. So the next step is to analyse data from a different telescope and a different instrument."
Seems to me there is more work to do. The article mentions that data collected by the ESO VLT would be next to be examined.
I've looked for this interview on line but could not find it.
Frank

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 Message 52 by Tranquility Base, posted 12-02-2002 6:10 PM Tranquility Base has replied

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Tranquility Base
Inactive Member


Message 56 of 64 (25371)
12-03-2002 6:13 PM
Reply to: Message 55 by frank
12-03-2002 6:09 PM


Thanks Frank. It is one of those positive reuslts that needs to be repeated, agreed.

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funkmasterfreaky
Inactive Member


Message 57 of 64 (25454)
12-04-2002 2:31 PM
Reply to: Message 56 by Tranquility Base
12-03-2002 6:13 PM


Again questions from the muser. I still do not understand how the speed of light is determined though i will continue to look into this. Thank you to anyone who has provided links pertaining to my questions. In particular the radiometric dating. Now I am musing and speculating here again, thinking of the great many extinct species wondering if this evolution idea is all ass backwards.
See it seems at one point to me that this planet was teeming with life and wondrous variety of plant and animal life, that has very much dimished. Even a single life does not evolve it de-volves. When you are born you begin to die. Children are wonderful beings filled with curiosity and unbiased thought. Ever talked to a 3-5 year old? Sometimes I think these little people are far more intelligent advanced and objective than the rest of us. Now they seem to devolve mentally and physically from here.
Anything that begins to live does so with the purpose of dying. No matter the lifespan it is evolving toward death. This would to me (uneducated as I am) suggest a backwards process, a de-evolution. I have the feeling that our planet is actually going in the reverse process. Cooling core, diminishing atmospheric layers, less and less species surviving in changing conditions ect.
So how probable is it that we have the whole concept backwards? I'm sure this is not an original thought. It would definately give some credibility to sin=death as spoken of in the bible. Note again this is a wild stab in the dark by a man with a great imagination but little knowledge.
------------------
saved by grace

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joz
Inactive Member


Message 58 of 64 (25459)
12-04-2002 3:32 PM
Reply to: Message 55 by frank
12-03-2002 6:09 PM


Given that the universe is supposed to have expanded faster than c under presesnt cosmological studies I wouldn`t be too surprised if it turns out that it didn`t exceed c afterall....
Seems like someone already had that idea...
from POSSIBLE LINK BETWEEN THE CHANGING FINE-STRUCTURE CONSTANT AND THE ACCELERATING UNIVERSE VIA SCALAR-TENSOR THEORY | International Journal of Modern Physics D:
quote:
POSSIBLE LINK BETWEEN THE CHANGING FINE-STRUCTURE CONSTANT AND THE ACCELERATING UNIVERSE VIA SCALAR-TENSOR THEORY
YASUNORI FUJII
Nihon Fukushi, Handa, Aichi, 475-0012 Japan
In 1976, Shlyakhter showed that the Sm data from Oklo results in the upper bound on the time-variability of the fine-structure constant: |[(a)\dot]/a|10-17 y-1, which has ever been the most stringent bound. Since the details have never been published, however, we recently re-analyzed the latest data according to Shlyakhter's recipe. We nearly re-confirmed his results. To be more precise, however, the Sm data gives either an upper-bound or an evidence for a changing a: [(a)\dot]/ a = -(0.44 0.04) 10-16 y-1. A remark is made to a similar re-analysis due to Damour and Dyson. We also compare our result with a recent "evidence" due to Webb et al, obtained from distant QSO's. We point out a possible connection between this time-dependence and the behavior of a scalar field supposed to be responsible for the acceleration of the universe, also revealed recently.
Also AFAIR the fine structure constant does change as you approach high energies i.e the immediate post big bang universe...

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gene90
Member (Idle past 3822 days)
Posts: 1610
Joined: 12-25-2000


Message 59 of 64 (25475)
12-04-2002 6:39 PM
Reply to: Message 57 by funkmasterfreaky
12-04-2002 2:31 PM


quote:
I have the feeling that our planet is actually going in the reverse process.
You're partly correct in that the Earth seems to have a life expectancy. But I see no signs of "devolution" in the fossil record.
There have been a few mass extinction events in Earth's history where the majority of species on Earth suddenly become extinct.
http://hannover.park.org/...useum/extinction/extincmenu.html
The most recent is the K/T event that doomed the dinosaurs, much of the photosynthesizers in the ocean, and just about every land animal that weighed more than about 50 kilograms. That is assuming that we are not living in a mass extinction right now (brought on by human ecological destruction).
Yet after every event that has run its course, new forms of life have occupied the ecological niches left open. Were that not so, basically the final chapter of Earth life would have been the end of the Permian, in which up 95% of species were destroyed.
quote:
Following the Permian mass extinction, life was abundant but there was a low diversity of species. However, through the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous, major faunal radiations resulted in a large number of new species and forms. New terrestrial fauna that made their first appearance in the Triassic included the dinosaurs, mammals, pterosaurs (flying reptiles), amphibians (including frogs and turtles). In addition, the first birds appeared in the Jurassic. Among the terrestrial flora, the gymnosperms of the Permian remained dominant until the evolution of the angiosperms (flowering plants) in the Cretaceous. In the Cretaceous there was also major radiations occurring in several esablished grounps including the the marine reptiles, rudist bivalves, ammonoids, belemnoids, and scleractinian corals. Bivalves, and brachiopods. Marine groups that were present but did not undergo major evolutionary expansion in the period included the gastropods,bryozoans, crinoids, sea urchins, and sponges.
From: http://hannover.park.org/.../Museum/extinction/cretmass.html
Oh by the way there is a disturbing error (typo?) in the above quote. Bonus points to anyone who spots it.
[This message has been edited by gene90, 12-04-2002]

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Minnemooseus
Member
Posts: 3941
From: Duluth, Minnesota, U.S. (West end of Lake Superior)
Joined: 11-11-2001
Member Rating: 10.0


Message 60 of 64 (25487)
12-04-2002 7:29 PM
Reply to: Message 59 by gene90
12-04-2002 6:39 PM


amphibians (including turtles)?
Moose

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